Old and New [Seydon]

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa watched him, elbows resting either side of her empty plate. The tension in him was palpable even without their connection in the force. She caught a glimpse of the memory that eased a little of it from his shoulders and chuckled softly.

The lightness slipped away from her. If she could read him that easy, could Layil? She would access his fears and use them to cripple him, given the chance. She had to be sure that he could keep her at bay. But how?

She sauntered away from him, plucking up a shirt of his and doing only a few of the buttons. It may only serve to infuriate him more, but she needed to try and keep his mind focused at the very least. She certainly didn't help matters by kissing him, on her return, her raven hair tickling.

She drew back and settles herself into her chair. "You don't need to wear your weapons Seydon." She told him softly. "This won't be like Charal, when she altered your perception of where you were. We're stepping into a completely different battle ground."

She paused trying to figure out the best way to explain what they were doing, running a hand through her hair and biting her lower lip. "You have to think of it as stepping into another plane of existence, that's surreal but feels corporeal. Every wound you get your body will react like it has happened, you will feel pain, but your body will be unharmed. For example," she reached easily into his mind making him see whay she wanted him to see. Taking up her fork she stabbed it into the back of his hand.

In reality she hadn't moved, and once he'd stopped cursing her, he'd realise it was just a trick. She smiled, ever so slightly.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The illusion, and it’s pain, was perfect. Seydon wrenched his hand back, scowling, clenching fingers where he’d felt the fork prongs pierce through skin, muscle, and nick off the palm bones. When Rosa’s demonstration relaxed, so did his perception of hurt. The Dunaan blinked, looking over his limb, twitching and curling fingers experimentally and testing the range of articulate motor control. The other, the queen, used Rosa’s knowledge of facsimile image constructions to constantly confound and trick his mind, in their to-the-near-death struggle.

“So like a dream. Just extremely lucid,” Seydon hummed. He reached over a shoulder and wrapped his grip around Winterfang. “...Had an inkling that was a possibility. Never fought in something... someplace... like that before. Figured it I had something on hand, maybe it’d help in the transition over. Then again, way the mind works, how I perceive myself and whatever landscape awaits could nullify that.

“You’ll have to coach me,” He said, catching Rosa’s eye. “I won’t know up from down otherwise.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"Knowing up from down is the least of my concerns. We're going to use a force meld, it's the only way I can bring you in, so to speak, but..." She got up, unable to sit still as she spoke, pacing across the kitchen.

"I can't defend myself against my own mind. She can come at me sideways and..." She waved a hand towards the bedroom, referring to her nightmare but unable to put it into words. "She knows all my fears, all my triggers, everything. It she doesn't know all of yours."

She stopped pacing and gave him a long hard look. "You are the defence, Seydon. Up from down doesn't matter. What matters is that your defences, are not the strongest and we need to fix that before we fight her."

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“So what do we do?”

They were beginning to edge into his scope of practice. The Path afforded a kind of addiction to function and routine, settling into methodical preparations, culling tomes for tidbit information about a given species, repairing equipment, brewing potion and elixir then slaking back each bright crystal phial and feeling the alchemical wash sting like acid down your throat. Seydon wondered if there wasn’t any remnants of psychopomp fetishes or seance focusing rods still hanging about.

Storm breeze, a little thicker than the usual mid-morning airs that knurled against the balcony curtains, gusted and rattled the rusting iron rail bars stuck in the ancient stone outside. Cold, enough to make the hair on his body stand tall, clawed at the steam rise over Rosa’s untouched caff mug. Seydon’s belief in portent and omens waned between begrudging acknowledgement and at times tacit faith. He was unsure of this peculiar vibe, touch of raking fear just hemming the edge of his mood. Interpreted it as a step in the right direction; if fell things were aligning against them at Layil’s behest, then Rosa’s suggestions were striking the mark.

Their fight was doable. Even if it required Seydon to redouble and focus on his mental aptitude in ways he’d never attempted prior. Rosa inspired possibility; hook or by crook, he’d at least defang Layil permanently.

“Do you need... inside?” Seydon tapped a finger to his temple bone.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa could not help but smile. Despite what they were facing, despite what they had faced already, [member="Seydon"] was there, always. There were a thousand things that could go wrong, not just for her, but for him. Whatever worries he had, he cast them aside when she was in need, facing the problem head on. To him, it was another beast to be slain, another mountain to climb and all it needed was preparation. In that moment, Rosa could not have been more grateful and full of love for him. Together they could conquer anything.

She shook her head, reaching for his hand and tugging him away from the kitchen and out onto the terrace, the energy of the incoming storm made the force crackle. She brought him out here not just because of her need to be a little closer to the nature beyond, but also because she did not want to trash there newly refurbished quarters. "Close your eyes." she told him softly, standing close enough that she could feel the warmth coming from his body. "I want you to build a wall around your mind, make the footings deep and the material strong. Visualise it. You're going to try and keep me out. Every time I breach your wall, you are going to need to repair it. Understood?"

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Easier said than thought, Seydon wondered? He drew on the Silent Temple for inspiration, imagining its glory days, newly fabricated from lunar stone and ferro-iron concrete, plied by hundreds of artisan hands worked the stone, hewing architraves and false arcade walls, notching the hard crenellations, slicing in lancet windows overlooking the deep valley gorge and the winding python river run that swept off the temple’s shoulders down a steep, roaring waterfall. Imagined the stone was his bullwark; flexing it as liquid muscle, hardening and plying further ‘pressure’. He wasn’t sure how the defence layers were supposed to ‘feel’. It was vague, just a lozenge of prickling light in his mind’s eye.

Then he felt his wife come in. Flitting kaleidoscope of turning, red light. Sometimes, when they were in a thick emotional bond or were reaching out with particular need, he could see her as illumination bobbing behind his eyes. Seydon briefly took comfort, then frowned. The first barrage were lancing pinpricks, hot needles scoring into his brain. The Dunaan fought from staggering, tried mending where he felt the pain was worst, fighting back with blunt, bashing bursts. She was testing him and thoroughly. Any weakness found, she made sure to point out, driving unseen augurs into nerve endings, pain striating up his skull. His neck was already aching, a hardness knotting between his shoulders, sweat hot and running down his chin.

“Hhrrgghh...!”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Instinct made her take hold of his hands, knowing the pain he was in. It was a necessary cruelty, for Layil would come at him hard and fast seeking to drive him out so she could tackle Rosa.

"You need to be faster." She told him, striking with pinpoint accuracy while he hastened to batten down the hatches where she'd struck moments before. "Push me out." She hammered again, harder this time, tearing a great crack open in his mental wall. Increasing the frequency, speed and strength of each strike as he worked, trembling slightly with the effort.

She could not afford caution, if he could not keep her at bay, then she would not risk taking him with her.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Trying...” Seydon gritted.

The light flitted with hummingbird speed, dodging about his mental constructs, hemming and weaving with laser-focus precision, puncturing where the ‘walls’ were thinnest and leaving Seydon feel his brain slowly bleeding out into the basin of his skull. The approach wasn’t working; it was all vague inclination and feel, nothing tactile or concrete. He heard Rosa murmur another ‘faster’ and drive a spike into a point just between his eyes. The sting bloomed heat under the skein of tissue and skin.

Not working. She was slaughtering his weeping defences. Seydon fought to inculcate calm and try playing the game – That. That was precisely it. Dunaan played the Path according to their own rules of individual engagement, rarely meeting their opponents on anything like equal footing. They were either better swordsmen, better armed and armoured, held advantage in terrain with prepared traps and ambushes, kitted with fell poisons, or drunk up to the gills with juicing potions that drove their metabolisms to the absolute limit. Seydon went slack, face relaxing, pouring his efforts into his mind’s eye.

Visualized an empty plain of solid fog wafting around his ankles. Winterfang was in his hands. On came Rosa now, wraith of peeling light with a gleaming rapier in hand. Now, now he could see. Her rapid point thrusts craned off the steel of his longsword flat and he countered by slicing across her own attack vectors. Pain still throbbed where he thought he saw dozens of nicks and mean cuts bleeding through clothing tears. He redoubled, assaulting Rosa’s phantom, imagining curt blows jousting back, trying to wind through her own guard and score back.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"Yes!" Rosa exclaimed, as her attacks began hitting hard blocks, driving her back. "Better. Again!" She was beginning to struggle now, taking longer to find opening in his defence. Hitting harder and harder each time and each time he was there to meet her, riposting now.

Rosa swelled with pride, smile spreading across her lips. She went in again, one last powerful strike just to see. He was there, faster than he had been, his riposte striking home and raising needling pain behind her eyes. She laughed, relaxing and withdrawing from her assaults and opening her eyes.

She allowed him a brief moment to recover his senses and open his eyes before throwing her arms around him and kissing him fiercely.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He felt her body through his thin shirt she wore half-buttoned and tugged her closer with a hand on her waist and rump. Maybe, she was inducing a bit of endorphin production through the contact of her lips to his own. Seydon’s thoughts were returning, suddenly sluggish after their mental bout and growing with resumed speed and alacrity. She was proud of him, proud for him. The Dunaan still felt so juvenile compared to her own mental prowess, all that could be congratulated was that he’d found his way to sustain and reply to mental attacks on his own terms. His wife wouldn’t let him pause for any self-denigration.

A tongue slipped over his own and glided the skin of his hard palette. Seydon nearly choked, drawing Rosa closer, holding her against the rusting balcony railing. Storm wind blew her hair out like a dark banner roll. He felt warmed, nerves and blood scalding. His hand slipped through a part in her shirt buttoning and held fast to her bosom.

“Take it,” He said when they parted for air, still panting. “That went well? For a first try...?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa nodded, the railings cold at her back while he was warm. She fought against primal urges, fingers kneading the muscles in the back of his neck. "If you can maintain it like you were at the end, she'll be hard pressed to drive you out. How's your head?"

Sore she expected, like the sort of pain that came from lack of sleep and a night too heavy on the drink. She had a cure for that, an endorphin boost that would keep them both atvthe height of their game when it came down to it.

Besides which she wanted him, there and then, with cold storm winds at her back and his heat before her. "I love you, Seydon."

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“I love you, Rosa,” He whispered his vow and exchanged a warm kiss against a humming screen of cold wind. Another storm, ink-shot thunderheads pushing over the west Ardines, cotton folding over broken teeth capped in silver, billowed and sounded with thunder roar. Lightning flashed; caught the flecks of pale violet in her eyes, small petals against beds of lilac, raven hair like curls and trestles of foreboding thunderstorms themselves.

Hands yanked at him. Pulled, fumbled with myriad buckling, rearranging clothing onto the rough grey ferrocrete under their feet. Their hot kisses ran nearly everywhere, tugging each down onto the makeshift bed arrangement built out of his coat, pants, and shirt. He lost his boots when Rosa’s heel accidentally kicked them through a part under the railing, their hard leather and vulcanized treading echoing hollow off the lower outer walkways and separate landings. Seydon’s mind still pounded with blunt pain. She seemed to know, rubbing her thumbs over his temples, dapping kisses to his eyelids and awakening erogenous zones Seydon didn’t know he had.

A single teardrop fell out of the overcast high, high above. It fell and splashed over his shoulder. Seydon blinked, glancing up, noting a few more tell-tale patters streaming down. The grey of the ferrocrete seemed to burn to a dark gunmetal where the slow rain pattered and struck off the bare material. He glanced at his wife, eyeing their chamber interiors. But the rain felt warm, and what’s more, she had herself just the perfect umbrella~ They laid there as the downpour began, muting Rosa’s tremulous notes, a storm of skin as her very own Dunaan loved her.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

As if offended by their act, the skies rumbled and the heavens opened, great curtains of rain had them and their make shift bed drenched in seconds. Unseasonable icy winds drove them back inside amidst laughter, stolen kisses and a scramble for sodden clothes. She stopped him from lighting a fire, challenging him to heat the room in other ways.


~*~


Rosa sat on the hearth rug, some time later, the blanket that had started off round her shoulders now resting about her crossed legs. The fire chased away the last of the storms cold out of their room. She was procrastinating now, staring unseeing into the dancing flames, her doubts internally directed. A myriad of what ifs running through her mind. She gave the game away by occasionally chewing the inside of her cheek.

What are you waiting for?

The taunt seemed like a million miles away, Layil still trying to find her way back through the flood of joy that left Rosa aching in the greatest way possible. She realised then, that now was as good a time as any, if not the best. She sought her husbands amber gaze and found her doubts trickling away under his steady gaze. Doubts left opening for attacks, she had to be sure. Taking a deep breath she exhaled slowly, the tension they had been creeping back up on her easing away. She closed her eyes slipping into the ebb and flow of the force, letting it wash over her and then reached out for Seydon.

They had achieved various states of openness and unity through their force bond, so the meld was not hard to achieve once Seydon had reached back. She could feel his heartbeat like it was next to hers, she could hear the way his mind was already working its way into the place he shifted into when hunting. Her Dunann, her husband and her greatest strength. Together they floated amidst the forces currents. Adjusting to the new sensation and preparing each other. As if taking him by the hand to guide him, she turned them towards the darkness that was lurking at the back of her mind, towards the smirking overconfident queen was was waiting for them.

They 'stepped' towards it.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

They slipped together into a running stream of emotion and consciousness. It felt like slipping along an otter run, cool mud at the back, bare wind tickling through toes and up over the knees, racing downward on an angling slide toward waiting water. Other occasions, like just a quarter of an hour past, locked on the bed, soaking from downpour, hurrying towards mutual culmination, their bond relaxed and he felt Rosa’s soul mix and knot easy around his own. The tension was palpable; Seydon visualized, realizing Rosa in her ordinary adventure clothes strolling beside him, he in his own kit and gear, walking on a bridge of immaterial glass through tunnels of smoke and streaking starlight. Into a maw of whispy black toothed with jags of pale, forlorn light. Something whispered and panted, in dislocated echoes. A buzzing hummed in his ear until it rattled his musculature. Seydon released the sword Winterfang from its scabbard, and marched with Rosa into the void.

...Onto an inlet shoreline. Cliff walls of some dark green rock soared above, nesting a beach made of loose silica and the bones of desiccated nightmares. A swollen, broken sun hung low by a bleak, sickly horizon. Inky clouds bobbed over an ocean that made no sound. Seydon paused, glancing about; he hadn’t imagined this. It was perhaps a sympathetic construct born out of ‘Her’ presence. His hand clenched a little tighter around Rosa’s. They’d make Layil bleed across the shore, and leave her shattered essence to drift and submerge in the phantom-ocean spoor.

A feeling rumbled in the air. She’d maybe read that thought. Seydon snarled, exhilaration tweaking his nerves and fibrous muscle connections taut.

“You’re done. Come out and let’s finish this. Sick of you, and everything you are.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"The last time I came near you, monster, you drove the brother of that damned sword into my chest."

Her voice came from everywhere, harsh and cold, but Layil herself did not. Rosa's eyes scanned the twisted beach an ominous feeling rising within her. Hold fast, don't let her draw you in. She turned so they were back to back, light saber coming to life in her hand, the familiar snap his so well etched onto her memory, its gentle hum offering strange comfort. She could feel Layil flitting around them, unseen but there, looking for an opening.

"Do you remember that? Do you remember your wife's blood soaking the sheets of your bunk as you wrestled to bring her back to life? Do you think she truly forgave you for that?"

"It must be hard for you" Rosa bellowed back at the whispers on wind, "To witness a love like no other, to see it in all its glory and not be able to touch it, nor feel it." A low hiss of anger and the silica beach around them stirred. "To be caged and alone. Unfeeling, but seeing." The hissing grew louder, the beach vibrating beneath their feet, shadows stirring beneath its surface. She's going to come from... her warning trailed off as the ghostly body of a six year old boy drifted down the beach towards her.

"You'd know all about being in a cage wouldn't you Rosa. Do you remember this one? I do, I remember the way you screamed, the way you beat your fists and begged me not too. This pathetic, wailing creature was the last straw. You stopped fighting after that. Do you remember?"

Icy fingers were closing about her heart, the lightsaber slipping from her fingers. She couldn't breathe, she'd forgotten Seydon at her back, she saw only the boy whose death had broken her.

"How many children will it take this time round? Two? Three? How about a hundred? Or a thousand?" They clawed their way out of the sand, boys and girls all under the age of ten, with hollow eyes and thin mouths. Phantoms, nothing more, but to Rosa they were all real. All terrified. They all stood stock still, tears spilling from hollow eyes. Layil materialised amongst them, golden mask as perfect as it had been when she'd first been given it, red saber aglow.

"Shall we see?"

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon & Rosa Vs Layil​

Illusory steel, a phantom blade, rang off Layil’s edge of warbling plasma. Seydon had shouted something, a coarse oath laden with acrid foulness, poison-words Dunaan at times threw at their prey to upset, unnerve their animal focus. He was across the shore, running through the small waist-high legion of eyeless child-things shivering as badly captured pict recordings. The juveniles burst into static flakes, snowing ash onto his flanks. Seydon lead with Winterfang, pitching into an assault.

At once, he and Layil blurred across a low embankment dune. Sand, mica dust, fragments of broken bone spun up from their heels. Seydon kept his blade in tight, hands and elbows behind the cross-guard. Fencing off a thrusting sequence, the imagined air warping under psionic stress, replying with step-by-step cuts cutting onto and over her own guard, winding agaijnst her lasersword. ‘Till he was close to puncturing her shoulder while her own point was locked out of the attack line and dangling helplessly past Seydon’s head. A visualization of dirty lightning hosed into his form. Seydon was dashed back across the beachhead, smoking and fighting convulsions. Layil was a banshee animal, dashing on palm and knee, leaping high and craning her lanky arms back over her shoulders and skull, to stab down at the Dunaan.

He groaned, spitting blood through clenched teeth. Seydon’s hand shot out, blasting away with pyrokinetic flame. Layil shrieked and was engulfed, bouncing off a low pile of sand. Both rose, swords up in guard again, with Seydon pacing around her and adjusting through transition-grips. He played his weapon back over his hip, ready for a counter strike but leaving himself open for a strike if he wasn’t dextrous enough. Tempting the phantom to try her luck; hoping their violence kept her from exacting further revenge on Rosa.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

They closed in around her, as she dropped to her knees, the ice around her heart spreading through her chest. She recognized more faces in the phantoms, faces of more than children, people numbered in their hundreds, people she had killed.

No. No more. For too long she had allowed Layil's actions to weigh her down, to sit heavy on her heart like they were her own crimes. They were not her to bear. Fingers closed around her lightsaber as she forced herself to her feet.

"Be at peace." She told the phantoms and with a whisper they were gone. She shifted her eyes up the beach to where Seydon and she encircled each other. She blinked love for Seydon swelling once more in her chest.

Then she was there, at his side walking past him, lightsaber unlit as she advanced on Layil. "I understand something." Layil came at her, a storm of fury not willing to let Rosa speak, Rosa flickered and was gone Layil's saber swung through empty air and she pitched forward to the ground, overbalanced.

She screamed her fury and threw herself instead at Seydon, but Rosa was there again, stepping past the blade, the heels of her palms connecting with Layil's chest with such force that it threw her several feet backwards.

"I came in here with the intent on killing you, not because it was necessary, but because I hate you. Now I understand that the hate and fear that you are so capable of bringing to life is fuelled by my own. So I let go of my hate."

Behind them, the cliffs began to crumble, pitching great rocks into sand and sea. The beach trembled beneath there feet and she took Seydon's hand again, tugging him close. "I let go of my fear."

The nightmarish beach heaved and cracked, the shoreline shattered and everything rose up around her and Seydon, threatening to engulf them. Silica beach, and rock looked to bury them. She drew Seydon closer, unafraid.

A blink, and the avalanche of nightmares was gone. Soft sand was beneath there feet, grey-gree cliffs had given way for large swaying palms and the sun glowed gold. This was their beach. And Layil lounged on it, golden mask gone, looking every bit like Rosa , save for the eyes and the lips parted in a mocking smile. She clapped slowly.

"Clever girl. But, those words aren't entirely true. You let go of your fear of me, you let go of you hate of me. But what about this?" She snapped her fingers and a wall of ice shot up with such force between her and Seydon that they were ripped apart.

"What about your fear of losing him?"

"Seydon?" Rosa called to him, unable to see him proper through the ice.

"What about your hate for what he path has done to him? Can you let go of that? Of him?"

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The glacial wall was slab thick, reminding Seydon of an unnatural union between ordinary and dry-ice. It was soaked to the touch, running with ice-melt, some of the water run congealing like wound clot and hardening up into keloids and rolls of bright pearls, resembling the skin of a well used candle. The Dunaan threw himself against it, chipping and gouging with the point of Winterfang, then tossing the blade aside and clawing in by hand. It seemed to soak in his wrath, using fell emotional energies to thicken and reinforce its dark structure. The ice was slowly turning from indigo to black, and beyond, Rosa was just a contorted shadow he only knew by instinct.

“Rosa...!” He called back. Redoubled his efforts, hooking blows against the wall face, hammering with inhuman force. Cracks spidered briefly, webbing around knuckle-gouged indents that rapidly filled with more ice-melt and cooled over. “Rose!”

Beyond, Layil was saying her piece. Seydon knew, because he felt his wife’s diamond resolve begin quivering. The queen was privy to secret doubts and untold worries from her inside track to Rosa’s psyche. Knew where to pinch and crimp, to pull, gnash, and claw, just where to make it hurt the most emotionally. Her parasitical existence depended on that, an extreme specialization in manipulation. A little schizophrenic grifter. Playing his wife with stories, taller lies, masking the fragile architecture of her falsehoods with patented attitude.

Seydon fought back. “Rosa!” He cried back through the ice, still pounding away. Paused to let his words roll through, opening their Force bond. Letting the feeling waft through, if not the words themselves, closing his eyes to concentrate on the warmth of her soul.

“Rose, it’ll be okay. No matter she says or wants you to think, it will be okay. That... Thing... needs you to believe you need her. Like you need her doubts and fear. You never have, and you never will. ...Baby,” And he rarely used that sobriquet, save for when they coupled...“...Baby, we move forward, ‘cause we can’t look back. Don’t let her stop you now. Don’t let anyone, anything, stop you now...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa could hear the ice rumbling under Seydon's unrelenting attacks, each strike of sword or fist sending echoing booms throughout the structure. She took a step towards the ice wall, his figure blurred and dark. She placed a hand against the cold unrelenting wall, the heat in her hands causing small droplets of melt to run down and refreeze. She could hear Layil's soft feet in the sand coming up behind her, she turned her head slightly to cast sidelong glance at the red eyed beast as she came to a stop behind her.

"You're right you know." she told Layil as Seydon's words of comfort drifted to her as whispers on the wind, tears were marking tracks down her pale face, thumb caressing the smooth metal of her lightsaber one hand still on the wall. "I can't let him go. I cling a little tighter every time he comes back to me, just in case."

"In case of what?" Layil's voice was impatient, like she was desperately trying to allow her prey the dignity of a last word but really didn't want to.

"Just in case it's the last time. The last time I'll see him," she recalled their first kiss, with the cold space at her back, pressed against transparisteel in a backwater space station. She recalled Spira, when they first declared their love. Their second kiss with waves licking at their thighs, the first time they'd made love beneath a storm and given it a challenge to drown their noise out. "But then, every time he does go, it is the last time I see him. Because whenever he comes back, somethings changed. Sometimes its just in his mind," She remembered their reunion on Teth after he'd kill his mother, where he'd told of his plans to exact revenge the remaining eight. Those that were responsible for his father's death, and the deaths of many others, balancing so delicately on the edge of the light. Tipping dangerously close to dark. "Other times...."

He'd been gone a year, she remembered his knuckles rapping on the airlock door on her ship, berthed on Arda's shores. Gone was her blue haired blonde eyed Jedi. "The Path returned him too you as a monster." Layil hissed gleefully and Rosa, despite it all, laughed at her, grip tightening on the lightsaber. "No Layil, it didn't." She turned to face her then, stepping in close. "It returned him to me alive, and a Dunaan."

Snap-hiss.

Layil's eyes widened in shock. "Beneath it all, all the scars, he's still mine." She twisted her wrist widening the hole she'd just made in Layil's chest. "Still the same man that I fell in love with. The same man that would go to the ends of the galaxy if I asked him to. I'll never let him go, because I never have to. No matter what happens, the force will keep us together. And no words of yours will ever stop that."

Behind, where her hand hand left a print in the ice, it was melting rapidly, forming a tunnel for Seydon to step through. She deactivated the blade stepping back as Layil sunk to her knees. Rosa regarded her with pity and sadness in her eyes. "I'm sorry that you never knew love."

"The Dark Lord-"

"is dead. And never loved you."

"Oh but he did, don't you remember?" It was a last pitiful attempt to draw a rise out of either of them, repalying the image of Ordo bearing down upon a broken Rosa. Rosa reacted quickly, orange blade singing into life once more, flashing horizontally through flesh and bone. Layil's head rolled away on the sand.

"I'd rather not."

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Layil turned to crystal and fell apart. She took the mindscape with her. Suddenly, the air blew out and the far grey sea spread out from the silica shoreline began turning back, appearing like a pict-video in reverse, the surf crests waving back toward an unseen point just below the melting horizon. Somehow had thrown turpentine over the dream-realm’s canvas, dissolving colour and line into puddling ichor swirls and cyclone vapours picking up in intensity and volume. At once terrifying and cathartic, like Rosa Gunn’s soul was finally discharging the last of many daemon poisons. Wordlessly, Seydon reached and held on to her hand. Strange reality broke out under their feet, showering them with cold light, tossing them down tunnels of searing void, before Seydon felt abruptly... awoken.

His eyes snapped wide, open and sharp. Only a cold, wet current blew in from the far chamber balcony, fluttering the pale curtains. The hearth was long extinguished and dark. They still sat, knee to knee, poised across one another on a rough roll-out rug that scratched and pricked at their bare rumps, loins clothed with just a shared blanket draped across their waists. Rosa was coming to and blinking out of a thick, muddled sleep. Both paused, caught one another’s stare in the dark, skin bumped with hanging sweat.

Calloused hands reached over and pulled Rosa off the rug, onto Seydon’s hard lap. Chilly sweat mingled, his touch rolling, almost clawing, down the smoothed measure of her back.

“Is it done...?” He whispered, almost breathless. His heart choked and ached in the silence.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]